Tech Law

One almost has to pity Facebook. Less than a month after it rolled out user enhancements that were lauded even by privacy advocates, it is back in the doghouse, facing a class action lawsuit and testy inquiries from two members of Congress. The problem once again is privacy. Many of the most popular...

From Google, where privacy's just another word, and the idea of augmented humanity is one in which zombies whose memories are stored in Google's servers shamble around the streets, comes news that we need political reform. It's shocking how the system works, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told an editor fo...

The many laws enacted by states to ban texting while driving appear to be for naught, suggest findings from a new study by the Highway Loss Data Institute. It found no reductions in crashes after these laws took effect. In fact, the bans were associated with a slight increase in the frequency of aut...

The White House is working with several federal law enforcement agencies to draft legislation that would make it possible to monitor all Internet communication services, including social networking sites, peer-to-peer messaging and encrypted email systems, according to a New York Times report. "Soci...

From Russia, where winters are cold and vodka is the best-known potato product, came news earlier this month that authorities there had cracked down on an environmentalist group, Baikal Environmental Wave, on the pretext of searching for pirated Microsoft software. The Putin government -- which is a...

An overture by WikiLeaks to the U.S. Defense Department to collaborate on sanitizing classified documents on the Afghan war before the whistleblowing website makes the material public has been spurned by the federal agency. "[T]he Department of Defense will not negotiate some 'minimized' or 'sanitiz...

Roughly six months after it launched an investigation into the allegations at the heart of the Blake Robbins v. the Lower Merion School District school spying case, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced on Tuesday that no charges will be filed. There was a lack of evidence "beyond a reasonab...

Richard Blumenthal, attorney general of Connecticut, has called for classified advertisement service Craigslist to shut down its adult services section. In addition, Blumenthal stated that he intends to call for his fellow state attorneys general to make similar demands of Craigslist. No particular ...

The Federal Communications Commission has reportedly ended a series of talks with major players in the Internet industry on the question of Net neutrality. This followed allegations that Google and Verizon are privately wheeling a deal that would let the latter give preferential treatment to Web tra...

The Federal Communications Commission has redefined broadband speeds as 4 Mbps for downloads and 1 Mbps for uploads. Characterizing the move as "overdue," the FCC pointed out that the previous standard of 200 Kbps in both directions was set in 1999. The new speeds were included in the FCC's sixth br...

U.S. broadband providers have gotten away with shoddy speeds and restricted access because Americans consumers are pretty clueless about what they're actually buying. A whopping 80 percent of broadband users in the United States do not know the speed of their own broadband connection, a Federal Comm...

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to carve out new rights to digital privacy for public sector workers in its 9-0 decision in City of Ontario v. Quon. The case revolved around the question of whether the Ontario, Calif., police force had the right to read text messages employees sent using the departm...

China's State Council Information Office has published a whitepaper outlining its view of the Internet -- along with a reaffirmation that it intends to continue to restrict access to it. For the most part, the paper, which also was posted in an English language version, expresses admiration of the I...

European privacy advocates are scaling up their scrutiny on Google regarding its Street View cars' collection of data from unencrypted WiFi networks. German prosecutors and the Czech data protection agency have launched separate investigations into the issue; Italy's privacy regulator is looking int...

Google has disclosed that devices inside cars it sent to gather street-level images for its Street View service captured information sent over unsecured WiFi networks while driving through city neighborhoods. The company has acknowledged that devices in the vehicles capture data in two countries -- ...

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